COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 1

Cognitive psychology

The branch of psychology that explores the operation of mental processes related to perceiving, attending, thinking, language, and memory, mainly through inferences from behavior

Plato and Aristotle

_____ and his student ______have profoundly affected modern thinking in psychology

rationalist

  Being a ______, Plato believes that the route to knowledge is through thinking and logical analysis

empiricist

Being an _______, Aristotle believes that we acquire knowledge via empirical evidence

Rene Descartes

______felt that one could not rely on one’s senses because those very senses have often proven to be deceptive

John Locke

_______ believed that humans are born without knowledge and therefore must seek knowledge through empirical observation

Immanuel Kant

_______argued that both rationalism and empiricism have their place–which is accepted by most psychologists in the present

structuralism

·       First major school of thought in psychology

·       Seeks to understand the structure of the mind and its perceptions by analyzing those perceptions into their constituent components

Wilhelm Wundt

He is a German psychologist who is often viewed as the founder of structuralism

Introspection

• structuralism

• looking inward at pieces of information passing through consciousness

Edward Titchener

·       he certainly helped bring structuralism to the United States

·       His experiments relied solely on the use of introspection

pragmatism

• functionalism

• knowledge is validated by its usefuleness

William James

• functionalism

• ·       leader in guiding functionalism toward pragmatism; authored the Principles of Psychology

Associationism

·       Examines how elements of the mind can become associated with one another in the mind to result in a form of learning

·       may result from contiguity, similarity, or contrast

Hermann Ebbinghaus

• Associationism

• was the first experimenter to apply associationist principles systematically

• Specifically, he studied about the role of repetitions in learning– called rehearsal–using nonsense syllables

Edward Lee Thorndike

• Associationism

• held that the role of “satisfaction” is the key to forming associations

• ______ termed this principle the law of effect

Behaviorism

·       Focuses only on the relation between observable behavior and environmental events or stimuli 

·       _______may be considered an extreme version of associationism

Ivan Pavlov

• behaviorism

• landmark work paved the way for the development of behaviorism

  ·       Shifted psychological experiments from human subjects into animals

John B. Watson

·       Father of Radical Behaviorism

-          He believed that psychologists must concentrate only on observable behavior

B. F. Skinner

proposed the concept of operant conditioning –strengthening or weakening behavior through rewards and punishments

Edward Tolman

·       suggested that all behavior is directed towards a goal

- He is viewed sometimes as the forefather of modern cognitive psychology

Albert Bandura

·       stated that learning appears to result from observations of the rewards or punishments given to others 

·       This consideration of social learning opens the way to considering what is happening inside the mind of the individual

Gestalt

·       We best understand psychological phenomena when we view them as organized, structured wholes

·       “The whole is more than the sum of its parts”

·       We cannot fully understand behavior when we only break phenomena down into smaller parts

cognitive revolution

·       In the early 1950s, a movement called the “________” took place in response to behaviorism

cognitivism

·       is the belief that much of human behavior can be understood in terms of how people think

·       It rejects the notion that psychologists should avoid studying mental processes because they are unobservable

·       _______ is a synthesis of earlier forms of analysis such as behaviorism and Gestaltism

Donald Hebb

·       _______ proposed the concept of cell assemblies as the basis for learning in the brain

·       Cell assemblies are coordinated neural structures that develop through frequent stimulation

B.F. Skinner

·       wrote an entire book describing how language acquisition and usage could be explained purely in terms of environmental contingencies

Noam Chomsky

·       stressed both the biological basis and the creative potential of language

Turing Test

a computer program would be judged as successful to the extent that its output was indistinguishable, by humans, from the output of humans

Artificial Intelligence

·       the attempt by humans to construct systems that show intelligence and, particularly, the intelligent processing of information

Intelligence

It is the capacity to learn from experience, using metacognitive processes to enhance learning, and the ability to adapt to the surrounding environment

Metacognition

people’s understanding and control of their own thinking processes

Cultural Intelligence

·       person’s ability to adapt to a variety of challenges in diverse cultures

·       Some psychologists have been content to define intelligence as whatever it is that the tests measure, but this definition is circular

2 stratum model of intelligence

• Proposed by John Carroll

• Intelligence compromises a hierarchy of cognitive abilities:

• Stratum I – narrow, specific abilities

• Stratum II – broad abilities

• Stratum III – single general intelligence (g)

Fluid Ability

is speed and accuracy of abstract reasoning, especially for novel problems

Crystallized Ability

is accumulated knowledge and vocabulary

theory of multiple intelligence

·       Proposed by Howard Gardner

·       There are eight distinct intelligences that are relatively independent of each other

Triarchic Theory of Intelligence

·       Proposed by Robert Sternberg 

·       Emphasizes the extent to which different aspects of intelligence work together

·       Creative abilities are used to generate novel ideas 

Analytical Intelligence

mental steps or components used to solve problems

creative intelligence

use of experience in ways that foster insight

practical intelligence

ability to read and adapt to everyday life